


our hearts are small and ever thinning

by littlescienceybits (Gemz0rz)



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Capital F, F/F, F/M, Feelings, FitzMack - Freeform, FitzSimmons - Freeform, Multi, soulmates: colour trope, spoilers for the s2 midseason finale, tripsimmons - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-15
Updated: 2014-12-15
Packaged: 2018-03-01 15:58:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 703
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2779097
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gemz0rz/pseuds/littlescienceybits
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You live your live in black and white until you meet your soulmate.</p><p>...But just because someone paints your world in colour does not mean you light theirs up.</p>
            </blockquote>





	our hearts are small and ever thinning

Leopold Fitz had been 17 before he knew what blue was.

   (It was the calm that came in the moments before sleep, the sound of the aircon in the summer. It was the soft hum of an electromagnet and the way the waves felt crashing over his feet when he’d visited Brighton with his family when he was younger.)

It was also the colour of her shirt.

Her eyes were the warmest brown. After years of trying to imagine what colour would be like, he felt foolish now for falling so short.

They were two magnetic poles meeting in a world suddenly vibrant, and he was washed green. Fresh. New the way a leaf was in April, its edges sharp in a sudden wind. He was brighter for being beside her, and they soared.

Until they didn’t.

* * * * * * *

There’d been a chemical spill their second week on the Bus, and he’d ruined the shirt he was wearing. Luckily they both had backup clothes at the lab for these occasions.

  “Toss me the green jumper. With the buttons.”

But the jumper she’d held up was maroon, and though he couldn’t find the words to tell her, his world had tilted sharply. All this time – _all_ this time – and she didn’t know the colour of her own eyes. It put the ocean to shame with its depth, and she didn’t know.

Then he’d realised that she didn’t know the colour of his either.

It would have been easier if his world had dimmed then – but it stayed vibrant.

And he loved her on in Technicolour.

* * * * * * *

He remembers the week it changed. She’d been run ragged, trying up to the bounds of her morals to save Skye… and all of a sudden, the week had unwritten itself from the sheet of her face. Trip kept a respectful distance, waiting to assess the situation, but she spoke like she was in awe of something.

And from then on, her socks always matched.

* * * * * * *

There was no beauty for her beneath the waves. Peering out the boxy windows had been a futile exercise in trying to remember daylight. She would carry that hopelessness with her for the rest of her life, a grey stone in a dark pocket.

The lights around him had blinked for nine days after they’d found the sun, and she had watched the rhythm: a tiny, electric semaphore flag that told her the same thing for 218 hours.

At hour 219, they changed.

She’d climbed over crisp linens to kiss his face, tears rushing over her own numb cheeks. He’d just blinked up at her, his eyes certain, and she had held on.

In the flood of what was coming, she was determined that he would not be the solute.

* * * * * * *

  “ _Jemma_.”

She remembers the day he’d found his words again. Just a crayon box full, with some of them broken, and the sound of his voice was rusty pipes – but it was art to her.

(If you’d asked him, he still would have told you she was the paint.)

* * * * * * *

It wasn’t immediately apparent to him, the new source of colour in his life, because he’d gotten used to the palette. It wasn’t until Bobbi had crossed behind the sofa, clapping a muscled shoulder and teasing something about how it was easier to tell who was on which side now –

\-- and Mack had just glanced sideways, calm and tentative. Unexpectant. Fitz had held his gaze, brave in the face of anything but waves, and smiled.

* * * * * * *  
* * * * * * *

It is two days after San Juan when she moves back into the lab. They work in silence all morning, but finally a sense of unease makes him bristle, and he turns to find her staring at a set of test tubes, unmoving. Speaking breaks their comfortable default, but his concern for her outweighs his sense of self-preservation.

It always has.

  “What’s wrong?”

Her eyes are the same warm brown that they’ve always been when she turns them on him, luminous and shining. Her frame is wrapped in an oversize jumper that looks vaguely familiar, but he can’t quite place it…

  “I don’t know where to start,” she admits, quiet, lost in the greyscale in front of her.

        “...These were colour coded.”

**Author's Note:**

> Hi. I'm sorry. That about sums it up. Find me on Tumblr [here](http://littlescienceybits.tumblr.com/).


End file.
